verbalgarbage's Profile

Our twice annual pilgrimage to Cheltenham to worship at the feet of Helen & David did not go unrewarded. The pre-starter of crab mooshi and cauliflower foam was simply stunning. Superb death of flavours and textural lightness of the custard was an absolute joy. It’s one of those dishes you just never want to end. David was characteristically modest when I asked him about it afterwards – just stock and eggs and steam… Ox cheek, tongue and watercress risotto followed – so much flavour was packed into this deep green peppery risotto which held its own against the rich ox cheek. Delicious.The scallops and lobster came with heritage carrots and puree with gingerbread foam and buttermilk sauces accompanied by what I think was hedge bedstraw – yup, new to me too. Being honest I really didn’t expect this to work but he somehow arrived at a perfect balance of the familiar (scallops & lobster) and the unexpected (gingerbread and buttermilk).Next was a dish of potato and turkey pastrami with buffalo mozzarella foam, onion puree, capers, sea purslane and soot. Comfort food but really really good complex sophisticated comfort food.So far the meal was pretty excellent but nothing quite prepared for sea bass and caramelised chicken wing with oyster sauce and sunflower root. Sunflower root, shout it out. It was marinated in white balsamic and orange and had lovely crisp texture with citrus & vanilla flavours. Just delicious and completely overshadowed the sea bass which itself was no shrinking violet. Next was partridge breast, leg & breast rissoles with black pudding sauce, slices of pear and radish and what I think was beetroot jelly (again, poor note taking). Stonking good dish on a playful theme of partridge in a pear tree. I was pretty stuffed by now but Helen came to my rescue with some excellent calvados. Sadly I skipped most the desserts and I was reliable informed that they tasted as good as they looked.

You can’t but applaud the restoration of this fine old lady. The entrance is particularly impressive – the bar is simply spectacular. The long curved restaurant is certainly planer than the hey look at me chutzpah of the bar and that’s not necessarily a bad thing - we are here for the food and company after all. I also suspect a full restoration might have been cripplingly expensive.

Anyway, 3 of us head off for a late lunch on Saturday and the place is virtually empty which is worrying for a place of this calibre. The menu is a little dullsville – all very nice and predicable and probably very well cooked but for someone of Mr Wareing’s reputation I fail to see any must have dishes. Of the starters only the crispy pigs head looks interesting. Everything is just, well, safe, dull and a little bit boring – same dishes that appear almost everywhere.

We order the crispy pigs head – cubes of brawn and hock coated in crumbs & fried – served with picked cockles and lavabread mayonnaise. Delicious although I can’t detect anything in the mayonnaise. The other starter of crab was fine – good flavours but nothing special.As for the mains the monkfish with orzo was fine – crabmeat was mixed into the orzo which was lovely but the portion was a little on small size. The monkfish & sauce were delicious. Venison with walnut mash was also pretty good.

However, the dover sole “Colbert” was nothing short of disastrous. It was partly our fault for not clarifying what Colbert meant – it means being covered in breadcrumbs. This simply destroyed the delicate doversole flavour. My guest could barely get through half of it.

Desserts were fine but forgettable.

So – just who is Wareing trying to please? Surely it can’t be himself for these workaday dishes. It certainly is not a destination restaurant for foodies. Is it really just for the unadventurous eater? Not sure. But I suspect that one of the main reasons why it’s empty is the wine: far far too few bottles under £40 let alone £30. The wine aspires to fine dining which is at odds the perfectly cooked dull food. This puts locals like me off from having this place as a local eatery.

A UK chef of some repute was telling how much he loved this place – so much so he’d gone several times. His belief was that it was destined for a second star soon and advised that we go soon while a reservation is still relatively easy. Certainly reading reviews and blogs the food did sound pretty wonderful.

We arrived after one hell of a journey – we even went down a dirt track at one stage. So, don’t even think about going without a sat nav. This is no fault of the restaurant – it is where it is – but expectations are high in the “it’d better be worth it” kind of way.

The hotel itself is lovely – rooms are spare and simply decorated. There’s no TV, hurrah – but no wifi, panic... e-mail cold turkey. The dining room is beautifully understated chic/rustic – large tables with lots of space between them. You never feel crowded.

The wine – oh dear. Not a good start. The Chablis was warm – well the top of the bottle of Chablis was warm. The rest was coldish. And we were told in no uncertain terms by the sommelier that we just had to accept the fact. Us: so – we just throw away the first glass of wine? Sommelier: no – but you have to accept that top is warm. This surreal exchange went on for a few iterations. The MD came over an also explained that the top of the wine was warm because of how it was chilled. We just couldn’t get through that the whole thing should be chilled. If there was a smiley for “hits head off wall” I’d use it here.

The first tranche of dishes were a mixture of lovely little single bites and not so lovely ones.- Kohlrabi, lovage- Beetroot, yoghurt, woodsorrel- Burned bread, maroilles- Potato, sour cream- Crispy onion- Pickle, dill, home dried ham- Snail 'blonde de Flandre'

The brunt bread was the one that set off alarm bells – it was quite similar to a dish we had in Noma last year. The Noma dish was a mussel encased in a shell made from pastry dyed with squid ink – an edible shell. This sat on a bed of mussel shells. It was delicious and fun. Here the burnt bread were shaped like small rocks and sat on a bed of real rocks. The bread was filled with marroilles cream cheese but dowsed in “soot”. Oh jesus, be god and all the saints this was horrible – sucked the life out of your mouth with its all-encompassing bitter burnt flavours. Imagine Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” as a single bite - well, The Road would still be a tropical paradise compared to this mean morsel. Much water was needed to wash the taste away.

Other dishes that followed included:

burned mackerel – very pleasant

whelks, whey sauce, spinach. Two whelks on a plate covered in dry uncooked spinach –one whelk was twice the size of the other but both had an unpleasant rubbery texture. I haven’t eaten an eyeball before but I imaging this is what is might feel like.

Bouchot mussel, verbena, runner beans – mostly pleasant but the slightly jellied verbena sauce had bitter end note which was just a little too strong & it got in the way of the rest of ingredients

Scrambled egg, wild herbs, wild spinach, pickled garlic. They sweetly replace my eggs with razor clams. The clams and accompanying sauce were delicious but let down but the herbs and foliage. The “foraged” stuff was quite dry and once the aromatics were gone you were left essentially with a mouthful of flavourless roughage.

Turbot from Dunkerque, fermented carrots, hazelnutbutter – if you are going to make a thing out of carrots which have been buried for 4 months – at least put more than 5 tiny slices onto the plate – great turbot ‘though

White cabbage, melted lardo, chervil, ramsoncapers – I have only vague recollections of this dish

Porkneck of Borre, spring onions , chives – great full-flavoured pork

Of the remaining dishes - Burned cucumber, cremet de Cap Blanc-Nez - Blackberry with anise hissop - Beetroot, wild strawberry, buttermilk and chamomile- “Herbs from our garden” yellow mirabelleI have only a vague memory – except for the beetroot dish which, although beautiful to look at, it was fairly inedible

So, what went wrong? I dunno – sounds like the chef has changed his style and embraced the foraging route. It was almost as if he’s been to Noma and had an epiphany but just hasn’t got the chops to pull it off. Warm wine is simply unforgivable. I looked thought cook book & read many blogs & postings and the dishes always look luscious and inviting but too many of the dishes here felt far too short of the mark. Hopefully this was a dud night and not the norm.